Personal Hardship

Fourteen years old can be a very critical age in a person's life. It is the year we leave junior high to go onto the next step of our life, high school. It also may be the year when you first participate in a sport or activity that will shape your future, but for me it was the age when my parents decided they would lead separate lives.
I grew up like any average girl, attended a good preschool, participated in sports and had good friends and a good community surrounding me. My parents were always in a good mood with each other and shared the joy of raising their children together. I have few memories of the bad times my parents had or hearing them argue. The worst memory I recall is walking into the living room one early morning and my mother looking at me and saying "It's time you need to know that I am leaving your father". My immediate reaction was a natural instinct for a teenager, which was to blame myself. Suddenly, I was now the minority at school because the majority of my peers still had both parents in a relationship I could either blame the separation of my parents on myself by telling myself that if I was a better kid or if I would have asked them for less, they might still be together. Or I could take the positive road, which would be wanting the best form of happiness for my parents, and, obviously, they were not going to be happy if they had to suffer through their arguments or problems.
My freshman year of high school was more of an emotional phase for me. After my parents divorce my eighth grade year and losing a best friend to suicide the same year, it was a roller coaster ride that did not get any better come October 20th when I got the news that another friend took her life. My father starting dating new women left and right until he met this one and ended up getting married, the day I had a major dance recital. It was awkward at first, seeing my father with another woman and, basically, having a second mom, although I never looked at her in that sense. I just saw her as a third parent and not a second mom.
Before and during my mother and father's marriage, they were best friends, which totally changed after the divorce. I had to learn to cope with the fact that my father no longer wanted to be there to support me like he used to do. My mother was the one who was at all of my sporting and FFA events. When I looked up into the crowd, it killed me knowing that my own father was not there. When it came to which parent I spent more time with, they divided the time up evenly until I got older and realized that my father really did not cherish his time with me like he should and I started spending more time with my mom.
As my life keeps going, I know that I will keep growing further and further away from my father which makes me realize that I do not need him in my life in order to live life the way I want to live it. My father has become the least of my worries and I do not let him come in the way of my education or the things I want to do with my life.
(593 Words)